Freshly arrived from his native Damascus in 1919, Rida Lababedi founded his textile company in England’s post-WWI industrial corridor. He was a pioneer for the import of Arabian high-quality cotton to be processed in Manchester and distributed across the British realm.
With offices and trading partners across the Middle East, Europe and Africa, our company had an incredible insight into the needs of rapidly developing markets. Over time, we expanded our operations to meet the growing needs of our partners, from transport and distribution to financial services.
By 1959, RLG had established itself as a major British textile trading company and was ready to embark on new corporate ventures. The most notable success into foreign industries was our exciting partnership with Nissan Motors and Datsun, who trusted us with the license to distribute their up-and-coming motor vehicles to all West Africa. This partnership was a turning point in our history as we soon became a top 3 Nissan distributor Worldwide. This enabled us to expand our trading activities globally. From our successes in textile and automobiles, we established a secondary headquarter in Lagos, Nigeria. There, we built up successful companies to produce furniture, plastics, metal products and soft drinks. Our global enterprise soon included such diverse companies as a fishing fleet, a taxi company, two logistic distributors and mining for precious metals.
As of 1966, our company’s growing needs for office and industrial space led us to enter the real estate business. We first built properties for ourselves, then to lease to others. Although we entered this industry late, it was to become one of our main areas of expertise.
In 1976 the group extended its activities to the United States via strategic investments in major fields, including real estates, financial and venture capital investments, construction, farming and banking. We established our third headquarters in Houston, TX and were able to accompany the Texas oil boom. Our Western Bancorporation served the Houston community and became a top 5 bank within the Greater Houston region.
Since then, RLG has operated in a variety of fields, ranging from video games and vineyards to ship building and chemical engineering. Over the years, the group has operated businesses in over 30 countries and on every continent, at times employing over 6,000 people. With our global headquarters now in the Principality of Monaco, we maintain regional headquarters in Las Vegas, London, Zurich and Beirut.
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